Fitness Older Women

Fitness Older Women - a topic that every woman over age 40 needs to understand. And the older you are, the more important this information is. Why?

If you do not give special attention to your physcial fitness, it will slowly disappear on you. As we age we lose muscle mass - unless we give time and attention to retaining it. We can lose heart fitness. Our ability to use oxygen decreases. And our balance and co-ordination suffers. BUT research has shown that the right sort of physical activity can not only slow these changes. It can ever reverse changes that have already taken place.

What many people do not realize is that there are three different aspects to fitness:

1. Balance and co-ordination fitness - prevents falls, gives poise and confidence
2. Aerobic fitness - sometimes called cardio-vascular fitness
3. Muscle and strength fitness
All three forms of fitness are important as we age.

Preventing falls

Preventing falls - the first and easiest part of Fitness Older Women Three minutes a day in the kitchen is all it takes.

As you age, there are subtle changes in your sense of balance and coordination. Research tells us that we lose about 1 % of our balance and co-ordination each year after age forty. One percent is not much and so few of use notice it. But by the time you are 55, you have already lost 15% of your balance and co-ordination. And if you are 65, you have lost 25%! (This is why so many women break break their wrists, arms and even hips as they age.)

You have probably seen a senior citizen or pensioner walking along looking her feet, maybe she uses a walker or cane for balance. It is the slow loss of balance and co-ordination over they years that leads to falls in the elderly. And it is one of the prime reasons why women lose their independence and need assisted care as they age.

But research shows that you can prevent and even reverse this loss in balance and coordination through Fitness Older Women exercises. These are simple things. They take only a few minutes. YOu can do them in your own kitchen or, if you prefer, you can do them waiting on line in a store!

These balance and co-ordination exercises are so easy. They require NO special equipment. I do mine while waiting for my morning coffee to be ready.(Maybe you drink tea.) And what is lovely about these exercises is that you will SEE the improvement in your own balance and co-ordination is as little as two week.

Here is information and directions for performing

Balance and Co-ordination Fitness Older women

Cardio-vascular improvement

Improving your cardiovascular fitness Improve your blood pressure, keep diabetes at bay, reduce or eliminate depression, improve your mood, control your weight and give your brain a health charge. How? Any rhymic exercise that will get your heart pumping and your breathing to deepen.

The research calls this aerobic exercise . Those who do it regularly (3X a week) call it their emotional and mental 'lift'. Walk, dance, swim, row, cycle - anything with sustained motion that will get you breathing more deeply and your heart pumping more quickly.

If you have high blood pressure a recent study published in Journal Hypertension stated that researchers in Australia found that long term program of swimming elevated blood pressure in participants who had hypertension at the start of the program BUT that walking did NOT show any increase in blood pressure over the long term. So, you might keep that in mind as you read the articles about Anti-aging: Cardiovascular exercises

Strength training - special for women

Strength training - builds bone AND can keep you out of a wheel chair One of the most important findings of the late 20th century was that strength training is important for bone building (reducing the risk of and even reversing Osteopenia and Osteoporosis) AND that even women in their 80's and 90's can benefit from regular strength training. (There are many studies showing the even nursing home residents could leave their wheel chairs or put away their walkers when they participated in a systematic strength training program.

There is a full page about strength training at

Fitness Older women: weight bearing activities

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Balance, strength, fitness and new research about Exercise and Aging

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